March 5, 2009Seminars with Artists: Dara Birnbaum

A pioneer in the appropriation of popular television imagery, Dara Birnbaum probes and subverts conventional viewing patterns, narrative structures, and pop icons to address the ideological and aesthetic character of mass media. Spanning four decades and varying styles, her work reveals a sustained engagement with media’s complex and dominant societal presence. This evening, Birnbaum discusses her attempts to find alternative expressions that “talk back” to mainstream media’s penetration of—and even intrusion on—public and private life.

Since the late 1960s Seminars with Artists has provided a forum for intimate conversations with some of the most notable American artists of the day. This spring, the series takes it cue from works on view in the Museum and engages questions of site specificity, space, and place, broadly defined.